Friday, July 22, 2016

Political Re-Alignment In Iraq

Iraq is currently facing deep ceded political divisions. Old
alliances are being torn apart, while long-time rivalries are coming to the
fore again. This is happening within all three major alliances amongst the
Sunnis, Kurds and Shiites. This will lead to increased instability and
political stalemate until the parties re-align themselves into new coalitions.

The Kurdish parties used to have a rough consensus and acted
as a unified bloc in Baghdad, but that is now breaking down. For years the
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) divided
up the administration of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and positions
in Baghdad between them. Then in 2009 the emergence of Gorran (Change), which broke
away from the PUK promoting a reformist agenda, disrupted that power sharing.
That year Gorran would come in second in Kurdish elections behind the KDP. This
obviously caused huge problems for the PUK, but it and the KDP eventually attempted
to co-opt Gorran into the Kurdish administration. That in turn broke down in
2015 when President Massoud Barzani’s term as Kurdish president expired. He had
already been extended in office once before, but this time Gorran wanted
changes in the KRG political system in return for Barzani to stay in power.
That set off a huge political dispute topped off by the KDP removing
Gorran’s ministers from the KRG and refusing the speaker of parliament, a
Gorran member from entering Irbil in October 2015. The KDP took over all of
Gorran’s positions and the Kurdish parliament has not met since then.
Eventually that brought the PUK and Gorran back together in a recently agreed
upon alliance to oppose Barzani who they accuse of acting unilaterally on major
decisions such as independence, and portraying himself as the only Kurdish leader.
Barzani has also written off cooperation with the central government because he
does not believe it ever follows through with any of its agreements with the
KRG. The PUK and Gorran however are more open to accommodation
with Baghdad marking the possible end of the Kurds united front in the capital.
This crisis has left Kurdistan with no parliament, and an illegal presidency.

Iraq’s Sunnis have always been divided, but they are even
more so now. In 2010 they coalesced around Iraqiya and Iyad Allawi and came in
first in national elections that year. They were quickly torn apart by the
maneuverings of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Today all of those coalition
members are acting independently of each other. The Nujafi brothers’ Mutahidun
are pushing Sunni
federalism and victimization at the hands of the government’s forces. Allawi’s new
Wataniya is part of the reform
bloc in parliament that includes some Kurdish
parliamentarians and ironically Maliki’s followers who together are trying to
undermine Prime Minister Haidar Abadi. The Iraqi Islamic Party on the other
hand has thrown in its lot with the premier thinking that aligning with the
central government is the only way to gain concessions. Other leaders like
Salah al-Mutlaq are still around, but with much less influence than they once
had. This means Sunnis remain leaderless and still carry out contradictory
policies towards Baghdad.

Finally, the Shiite parties are coming apart and facing
future challenges as well. The election of Abadi split the Dawa Party in two
between his faction and that of Nouri al-Maliki. The latter is constantly
attempting to undermine the prime minister and has aligned himself with Iran
and pro-Iranian Hashd groups such as Badr, Asaib Ahl Al-Haq and others to plot
his comeback. Moqtada al-Sadr attempted to strong arm Abadi and the entire
political class to follow his lead by threatening them with mob rule if they
didn’t listen when his movement co-opted the anti-corruption, pro-services
protest movement and took over the Green Zone twice. Not only was no one
willing to listen to Sadr, but it blew up parliament as a result, which did not
meet for several months afterward. Sadr also stands opposed to Maliki’s return
and his allies, many of which broke away from the Sadr movement. They all have
a long history of not only competing for votes amongst the same constituency
but armed confrontations as well. That’s only likely to increase as many of
those Hashd groups want to turn their prowess on the battlefield against the
Islamic State and the high esteem they have amongst the Shiite community into
political power in the next round of elections. Ammar Hakim and his Supreme
Council at one time threw their lot behind Abadi, but then became frustrated by
his announcing major decisions like merging ministries and appointing technocrats
without consulting with them. They along with Sadr are also worried about their
potential loss at the ballot box to the Hashd. The Shiite parties were never a
monolithic force, and these differences existed for years. However, they often
came together on major issues. Now they are all competing with each other. Not
only that, but there is growing fear that these arguments could lead to
political violence as happened before between Sadr and Badr and the Sadrists
and Asaib Ahl Al-Haq.

This period of political upheaval came be traced back to two
events, the concentration of power amongst Iraq’s leaders and the return of the
Islamic State. First, when Maliki was premier he played divide and conquer and
split the Sunni alliance behind Iraqiya, and they have never recovered since
then. That’s actually not new as they were not that unified beforehand. Second,
Maliki went after so many of his rivals amongst all the political factions that
he ended up splitting his own Dawa party. His removal from power opened the
door for the other leaders such as Sadr to make a play for leadership. Third, the
war with IS has led to political aspirations amongst factions of the Hashd that
threaten the established Shiite parties. Finally, Barzani’s unwillingness to
make any concessions over his maintenance of the Kurdish presidency has brought
the rival PUK and Gorran together to oppose him. All of these struggles along
with the threat of future violence puts Iraqi politics in a dangerous place.
There will likely be a long period of instability in both Baghdad and Irbil
until the elite work out new alliances. That will make Iraqi politics even more
fractious and dysfunctional than it already was.

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About Me

Musings On Iraq was started in 2008 to explain the politics, economics, security, culture and history of Iraq via original articles and interviews. If you wish to contact me personally my email is: motown67@aol.com